Preface

While I was writing the final chapters of this book in the autumn of 2013, Super Typhoon Haiyan smashed into the Philippines with all its fury. With sustained winds at 315 kilometres per hour (195 miles per hour) and highs hitting 380 kph, many observers called it the most powerful storm ever recorded. As people in the Philippines fended for their lives, I was writing a chapter on Japan’s ‘bubble economy’ and ‘lost decade’, covering the stagnant years between 1990 and 2010. But the Pacific ‘monster storm’ changed my plans. I had seen enough. I had already decided to cover the tragic events of 11 March 2011, when Japan suffered the ‘triple disaster’ of a catastrophic mega-thrust earthquake and tsunami, and then a dangerous nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Watching Super Typhoon Haiyan throttle the Philippines made me realize that the symptoms of climate change, not tepid economic growth and disgruntled youth, or even international disputes over the Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands, represented the most serious challenge facing East Asia. In the end, I scrapped the last chapter and drafted a new one that included a history of climate change, sea level rise, Pacific super storms, and natural disasters in the context of what many geologists have come to call the Anthropocene Epoch. It represents an important departure from the conventional manner of telling Japanese history – that is, it required fully embracing the idea that the physical islands called ‘Japan’ are geologically and historically unstable.